Hi. This is Luke. I usually don't blog, but I thought to myself, it was just my wife's birthday and I should probably let the world know just how great she is. Can you think of anyone in the world that you like better? I know that I can't - she is number one (that's even counting celebrities). Anyway, for Kellie's big day we decided to do two of the things that Kellie does best... shopping, of course, and returning merchandise (which included a battle with four of Ikea's employees). After a fun day of that we ate dinner at Olive Garden with Dianne and Kiley. Overall, a great day.

Me and Gabrie want Kellie to know how much we love and appreciate her and wanted to say HAPPY 27th BIRTHDAY!

What it means to be a Mom!

After almost 20 months I'm starting to realize what it really means to be a mom. Gabrie has been sick for the past month. I'll try not to get too graphic ( : First it was croup then a sinus infection (and stomach flu) for which she had a terrible antibiotic which only made her tummy problems 10 times worse. Then I had to watch as she was pinned down by Luke, a doctor and nurse (it took all three) for a procedure to she if her urinary tract is functioning properly, which it's not. And now this week she has been throwing up and having diarrhea again. I feel like I have been covered in one bodily fluid or another almost constantly! Laundry has been none stop! There have days when she was in and out of the bath 7-8 times and we have been through at least 3 different bottles of diaper cream. And Gabrie, the poor thing, is still pretty happy and very active! I thought I knew what it was like to be a mom but this month has been a new experience. I'm not trying to complain just explain the realization I've come to. Most of this past month I have just had to accept I would get nothing done beside taking care of her, like making sure her diaper was always dry and let her run around with no diaper, despite the possible consequence. It has made me very thankful for my own mother who raised 7 kids and increased my respect for anyone that has more than one child! Motherhood, it's tough work but definately worth it.

The wonders you find at the DI!

I went to the DI to find a white elephant gift and I found they had a bunch of wigs! So I got one thinking it would be a good gift. Well Gabrie thought it was just a fun hat and it helped that Luke and I laughed hysterically when she put it on. So here is what Gabrie would look like if she had more hair!

Maybe I'm glad she wasn't blessed with tons of hair!

On another note Gabrie got to meet Santa in person this past weekend and here is how it turned out...
She liked him much better from a distance! When I tried to put her on his lap she screamed and wouldn't let go of me but as I pulled her away she said through her tears, " Bye, bye" and blew him a kiss. It also helped he gave her candy which made her more happy. See below!

Temple Square

We didn't get to go to Temple Square last year, so we decided to go early to make sure we got to go! The picture above is my favorite one we took, I think it turned out really cool! It was very busy but that is part of the fun. Gabrie loved the lights and the sheep at the Nativity. All in all we lost one glove, one shoe and one sock, but she didn't complain! Luckily she was bundled up and it wasn't too cold.

ASHA Convention in Chicago

This past week has been a little crazy, but quite the experience. I got to go to the American Speech Language and Hearing Association's Annual Conference in Chicago! Now that doesn't really mean much to someone who isn't an SLP or Audiologist but it was pretty cool! My professor who helped me with my thesis this past spring submitted it to ASHA and it got accepted as a poster session, so my friend Jen and I (who did the project together) got to go present our program we developed. At first was I much more excited to just go to Chicago, I love big cities and traveling! But the highlight was presenting our poster, it was so cool to see people interested in something we spent six months of life doing! So it was totally worth it just for that experience!Me, Dr. Sandi Gillam, and Jen in front of our poster! Sandi was so great and helped set everything up for us.

Some other highlights were that there were no regular rooms left for early check-in at the hotel we were staying at so I got to stay in a suite on the 21 floor with a panoramic view of the city for only $99, and to make it better USU is paying me back for it! We were only there two days but we got to drive around the city and see a few things, have deep dish pizza (not that exciting I don't think we went to the right resturant for that), and meet a lot of interesting people. It was my first time leaving Gabrie over night so that was a little hard, especially after Luke told me she had been asking for me all day! When I got home I think she was mad at me because she wasn't excited, she just looked at me and then looked down! Luckily she got over that!Here is a picture from Navy Pier but I was too cold to get a better shot of the city! It is definitely called the "Windy City" for a reason!

Some other happening this week Luke's brother and his family came to bless their new baby Max and my good friend Becca got married. And some bad news BYU lost ):

Halloween

Hope everyone had a great Halloween! We sure did! We had a ward trunk-or-treat on Wednesday, it was a lot of fun - here are some pictures. Gabrie is Little Red Riding Hood, I was a cowgirl and Luke...was a flower!


Then on Halloween Gabrie came with me to my work to see all the kids do their costume parade, she liked it, I think (: Then that night she did a little trick or treating at Grandma and Grandpa William's neighborhood and then again at home with Dianne, Kiley, and Parker. Luke has this scary mask he wore and we thought Gabrie would be terrified of it but as soon as she realized it was just Daddy underneath she had no problem! She even gave him kisses!

Poor Parker!


I guess should have fixed the red eyes in the pictures but it makes it more spooky for Halloween!

Gabrie liked trick or treating she would walk from house to house and knock on the door and even say "Thank-you." She also liked to give out the candy too! It was a fun night!


"Hunkin" Patch


Last week we took Gabrie to a pumpkin patch. Like I mentioned she loves "hunkins" so we were excited to she how she would react to seeing so many. Well she loved it! Here are some pictures we took.

Captain Gabrie Grace

Our neighbor threw a Pirate Halloween Party the other day and I was excited because Gabriella loves to play with other kids (or so I thought) and it was her first friend party. Well we got there and she wouldn't let go of me! And even when she did she wasn't really interested in the other kids, the speech pathologist in me started to worry- "My child isn't socializing!" Well I wasn't really worried but I was surprised when she is with her cousins she goes and plays with no problem. As the party went on I realized she was in a new place with new people and I guess she is little shy (something she has never been before) she did play with one little girl but mostly she was interested in other things like....eating her cupcake and wearing her skull bandanna. Every time it fell off she would bring it to me to put back on!

And she loved the jewels from the treasure chest and the giant slide!
ARRG! To bad she wouldn't wear the eye patch!

18 Months Old

Today is Gabriella's half birthday so she is officially 18 months old.
Her favorite things are:
Pumpkins- She calls them "hunkins" and loves them! She thinks they are her friends, she tries to share with them, talk to them, and even give hugs. You can see her shear joy in the picture.
Elmo: We a got an Elmo sing-a-long from the library and now she loves anything Elmo and she will sing "La La Elmo's Song"
Books, Babies, and Balloons- She gets really excited when she sees any of them.
Food and Drinks: She will eat just about anything and lately she always wants a "shrink" in a different cup or water bottle.
Climbing, Swinging, and Sliding: All of which she does far too well for someone her age.
Pretties- This includes any kind of jewelry (usually if she sees me put on a necklace she needs one too) and hair accessory. Hence the picture-usually she takes her "pretty" right out once I put it in her hair but this morning she would say "pretty" then pat her hair and say "hair" and then once I put one in she would say "more" and we would start all over.
Singing and Dancing- She has done both of these since she was very little, she loves music.

All Gabrie All the Time

I had a bunch of pictures I've been meaning to post
so I decided to do a slideshow of them all! So
GABRIE ALERT!
There are 50 pictures of Gabrie so if you are not up
to it I understand. But I just can't help taking so
many pictures. Unfortunately she is getting to the
stage where she won't look at the camera and usually
runs away ( as you can see if you watch the slideshow).

So Cute!

I got Gabrie this cute dress from Target and it was so cute on that I had to post the pictures! I know I'm biased but she looked so adorable! What made it even more cute was the little pig tails I finally got her hair into! You can barely see them so I included the next pictures in case anyone doesn't believe it. Behind her is our upstairs hall/loft. The people before us painted this huge tree and then grass, flowers and bugs. Luke and Gabrie love it, I'm still deciding...

Here Gabrie is doing one of her favorite pasttimes, putting things on her head.

I also had to mention the pictures below are from the last month and all the fun we had. The ones where she has pink on her face was when I gave her my sister Jeni's lipstick to hold, not thinking she would able to untwist the cap. Oh and it was permanent lipstick, you have to use the remover inorder to get it off. It was pretty funny! The other pictures are of our new nephew Parker and niece Samantha, and the rest are pretty self expanatory.

Summer Pictures

We are homeowners! Finally!

I mentioned that we had made an offer on a house about a month and a half ago, but things have been so busy since then that I never had a chance to post that they did put an A/C in and we did buy the house- at the end of July. So we have lived in it almost a month now. It is a little out of the way which has it's pros and cons but on a teacher's salary- you take what you can get! Actually we really like it. The house is only 2 years old and has 3 bedrooms and 2 baths and a big backyard. It seems like so much space but we love it. Luke has really stepped up as a handy man. He hung shutters on all the front of the house, he mows the lawn, drills holes in things, and hung blinds in the inside. I painted our front door so it would match the shutter but it didn't turn out so good ) : And after spending a day and half on it, I haven't had the motivation to fix it. I have never really painted anything other than small wooden crafts before so I didn't know what I was doing but I figured it couldn't be that hard... Until I started! At one point I called my brother in law Scott and he said "you took the door off the hinges right?" I of course said no. Then he said "Well you took the doorknob off at least right?" I of course said no. So in the end I guess I should have because the tape I used ended up pulling the paint off wherever I had put it. Anyway, that distressed me quite a bit and I haven't been able to get myself into any projects since. But we still need some more furniture and to do more decorating but I'm trying to not be in too big of a hurry. In the meantime we are just throughly enjoying having our own home!

For Aunt Miriam

My sister Miriam and her husband Wade moved to Hawaii about a month ago and this video is for her, but Gabrie is so cute and talented that anyone should enjoy it! ( :
Miriam thanks for the post card, Gabrie carried it around and would say "tutle." So this is our attempt for her to say thank you to you and to grant you your request for more videos. This first clip is of her fussing but it is pretty funny to watch.



She is a little vain but what 16 month old isn't, right? Anytime we videotape she wants to watch and she always has to see my camera to check out the pictures of her after I take them.




One of Gabrie's talents is doing animals sounds. So for anyone of you who haven't heard them in person or over the phone like she does for Aunt Miriam, here they are.




The funniest thing was that after we taped this we watched it back to see if it worked and Gabrie came and sat on my lap to watch "the baby" and would follow all of my instruction on the video. So when it came to the part where Luke tells her to say "Moo" she did it again as she watched along with everything else we asked her to say. It works very well as an interactive video, we don't need Baby Einstein! Plus she already knows animal sounds what else could it teach her ( :

Baby Boxhead

One of Gabrie's new favorite things is hats. She can make just about anything into one. She'll get really excited and say "Hah, Hah" meaning hat and then put it on her head. Well she has these boxes that we inherited from her cousin Izzy which fit just right ...


We have more cute video and photos to post but life is a little crazy right now. Luke just started his first week of teaching and is working extremely hard and I... well I get impatient with technical stuff so this is all we have for now!

Happy Aniversary to US!

So we haven't posted for awhile, things have been crazy since we moved but I had this great idea to put pictures of Luke and I from high school on, in honor of our 4 year Wedding Aniversary. But... I couldn't figure out how to scan them on! So sorry no entertaining Prom pictures! But who would have thought that first day at Bingham High that I would have met my husband! I remember Sarah Hadley and I were late to Mrs. Glade's class and we had to sit on the floor because their were no seats left. We kept getting trouble for talking but we got the attention of some of the boys in the class (Luke). Turns out he was in three of my other classes that first semester, it was fate! Even though I didn't admit (to Sarah) to liking him until Valentine's Day our Junior year we were good friends and had a lot of fun. He made high school unforgettable, with his Backstreet Boys videos, setting up a stereo system in my backyard for our first kiss, writing creative and thoughtful poems, etc. I remember my friend Blair asking me my senior year if I thought I would marry him and I remember kiddingly saying "probably" but I than thought "what if I do?" and feeling totally calm about it. Which was weird for me because I never wanted to be one of those stupid teenagers who thinks she is really in love went she's not. We never came out and said that we want to marrying each other but we would use the phrase "I can't picture my life without you." And it was totally true. Looking back I am so glad things have worked out how they did. I remember people telling me marriage would be an adjustment but for me it wasn't I already knew Luke so well that it was natural. I don't know if this is making any sense or just my rambling but I am so thankful for the past four years and I am so excited for the future with Luke and our little family!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUKE!

Today is Luke's 26th birthday, Wahoo! In honor of him and his special day I thought I would come up with a list of things that make him special and some of the reasons I love him(in no particular order)! So here we go..

1. He is a great dad! He is very protective of Gabriella, he love to play with her and he even changes diapers.
2. He is funny. He can always make me laugh and we have so much fun together!

3. He is hot! What else can I say! He'll probably be mad I put this picture on!
4. He is a good dresser and has his own sense of style. I think this picture says it all!
5. He makes the best cards, you know for birthday's or Valentine's. You should count yourself very lucky if you have ever received one of his originals.
6. He is a kid a heart, which is why kids love him, which is another reason I love him. He will play pretend dragon games with nieces and nephews and the neighbor kids come to invite him to play in the snow or night games.
7. He was voted best personality for the class of 2000! ( :
8. He is a perfectionist at things he cares about and projects he works on.
9. He can pass Super Mario Bros 3 without dying once!
10. He is very supportive and encouraging.
11. He is a great dancer.
12. He has a great voice.
13. He can play a song on the piano, after hearing it once even though he's never had a lesson.
14. He is very talented in many areas.
15. He reads to me almost every night.
16. He loves Harry Potter as much as I do.
17. He is creative and has created many unforgettable moments in my life!
Luke- We love you, thanks for all you do!

Happy Belated 4th!

I know this is a little behind schedule, but we've got a couple of 4th of July related videos and pictures for your viewing pleasure.

We went to the parade on the 3rd with Corbin, Stef and Ashlyn, and then Miriam and Wade met us there. Gabrie really enjoyed herself, especially when any of the dance companies came by. As you can see in the video she's got some sweet moves but is a little lacking when it comes to balance.

On the 4th we went over to the fountain at the Gateway and let Gabrie run around a little bit. She was a too scared to go very far, but she enjoyed watching the other kids and mooching for food off of perfect strangers...

Gabrie has a new favorite activity as well. She loves to climb up the ladder and go down the slide of the little playhouse at her Grandma and Grandpa Williams' house... all by herself... despite a couple of early face plants...

And then of course there are the fireworks...

Gabrie wasn't sure what to think about the fireworks but as long as she was held she was okay. Overall it was a really fun couple of days. We enjoyed hanging out with both sides of the family. Gabrie really enjoyed spending so much time with her cousins and was totally exhausted by the end of the festivities.

We are getting a house....maybe

After months of searching for a house, we finally found one that felt right and I could actually picture us living in. So about two week ago we put an offer on it. Then went back and forth with them on the price for over a week, and guess what - I don't like their realtor! Finally last week we agreed and everything looked great, but we had it inspected yesterday and found out it does not have air conditioning like the home's specs said it did! I wondered why it always felt hot when we looked at it but I thought they must just be trying to save money. Well, turns out they did save money when building the house by not having A/C installed! So now we are waiting to hear if they will put one in or not. I guess the realtor made a typo when they said it had central air, so once again I don't like them ) : So hopefully something works out, otherwise we're going to have to end up living in the shack that Luke and I's game of "MASH" predicted (pictured below)...


... I guess it's not so bad, but if we get the shack, that also means we're having 10 children (again, according to the unalterable predictions of MASH)

Gabrie went "swimming" for the first time a few days ago - these videos show just how much fun she had.

At first she's just so excited to be outside...

but as you can see she's not too keen on the idea of swimming.

Of course it just took some getting used to and before long she was splashing like a pro.

... she's also a bit clumsy when she gets overly excited...



We hope everyone else is having an equally exciting summer!

We are one of THOSE people!

Sorry to anyone that actually checks our blog! It drives me crazy when someone does like three posts in one week then goes forever before doing another, which we did and it only bugs me cause I'm nosey! But things have been a little hectic and there isn't much to talk about. Anyway, I suppose I'll post some pictures because they're always fun and they sum up what we have been up to lately.

Well Gabrie got her first trip to Lagoon. She liked watching people and the train ride but that was about it. But Luke did win her a prize, a snake!

Luke is done with teaching for the year so he has been enjoying time as a stay at home dad as I finish up the school year and finish my grad program (even though I already walked in graduation). Last week I had to go finish my last two classes - I had class all day long every day. We stayed with Luke's brother Corbin and his wife Stef for a fews days and Gabrie had a lot of fun playing with Ashlyn!


Here is a picture of most of the people in my program. Jen, Richard, Lee, Kristin, and Laura we missed you. We went to dinner to celebrate being done, good job all of us! We never have to sit through 8 hours of class again! What a relief!


After spending all of this time with Luke, Gabrie is becoming quite the "Daddy's girl"


Our next (and probably only) adventure this summer is to buy a house! If anybody knows of any really really good first time home buyer programs or has any tips (seriously... like the money kind... for a down payment...) let us know.